''I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. "Out there," I called it.''

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), U.S. humorous writer. Quoted in While Rome Burns, "Our Mrs. Parker," Alexander Woollcott (1934).
Telegram to a friend who had just become a mother after a prolonged pregnancy.